Microsoft Teams encourages fast creation. Over time, that leaves many organizations with channels that are no longer active but still editable. Channel archiving addresses this gap. It allows teams to stop collaboration in a channel without removing its history.
From a governance standpoint, this creates a clear separation between active workspaces and historical ones.
I’ve always had a clear bias when it comes to product integrations. I’m far less interested in the ones that promise to transform the way we work and much more drawn to the quiet connections that remove friction from everyday tasks. The simplest integrations are often the most effective, precisely because they don’t ask people to change their behavior or learn something new. They just make the thing you were already trying to do slightly easier.
The direct integration between Microsoft Forms and Microsoft Teams falls into that category. It doesn’t introduce a new workflow, a new surface, or a new concept to explain. It simply allows you to share a form directly into a Teams channel, putting it in front of the people who need to respond, exactly where they are already working. No copying links. No sending emails. No hoping someone will come back to it later. The form becomes part of the conversation instead of an interruption to it.
Big news from the Microsoft Teams world! If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by juggling separate chats and team channels, you’re going to love this. Microsoft Teams has just rolled out a fantastic new feature that brings all your chats and channels into one unified location. This means no more hopping back and forth trying to keep track of conversations – everything is now centralized, making it super easy to stay on top of your messages.
For a long time, the General channel has been a default feature in any team created in Microsoft Teams. However, its generic name often led to it being underutilized or even completely ignored. To address this, Microsoft has introduced a new feature that allows users to rename the General channel in existing teams and assign a specific name when creating a new team.
Microsoft Teams has become an essential tool for collaboration and communication within organizations. As projects progress and priorities shift, the ability to archive channels becomes increasingly important. This feature helps team owners declutter their Teams environment and maintain organization by preserving important content without keeping the channel active.
Understanding the Importance of archiving channels is crucial for managing the lifecycle of a project. Once a project is completed or paused, archiving the channel allows team owners to keep the workspace focused and free from unnecessary distractions. It ensures that only active projects occupy the immediate workspace, making it easier for team members to navigate and collaborate effectively.
One of the reasons why users create more teams than necessary is that the team creation option is more prominent and accessible than the channel creation option.
To address this issue, Microsoft just made an improvement to the channel creation flow that will help with the teams governance and will likely reduce the number of teams in the organization moving forward.
If you are like me, you probably use Microsoft Teams to communicate and collaborate with your colleagues on various projects and topics. You may also belong to dozens of teams and hundreds of channels, each with its own stream of messages, files, and meetings. Keeping track of all these channels can be overwhelming and time-consuming, especially if you want to stay updated on the latest and most relevant conversations.
That’s why I’m excited to share with you a new feature that Microsoft has started to roll out in January 2024 and will be available worldwide in February 2024. It’s called Discover, and it’s a personalized channel feed that shows you the most interesting and important channel posts from people and topics you care about.
I've been working with Microsoft Technologies over the last ten years, mainly focused on creating collaboration and productivity solutions that drive the adoption of Microsoft Modern Workplace.
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